


Morning After

by holyfant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ...sorta, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:24:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a bad night for all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> take #151313 of "Scenes I wrote for that big WIP that are now obsolete". Unbeta'ed, so feel free to point out typos and such.

Waking was sudden and physical: he jerked awake as if someone had shouted into his ear, cheek pressed awkwardly out of shape by the pillow, open mouth pressed wetly into the fabric. In his agitation he'd forgotten to close the curtains the night before, so now he squinted and blinked into the light, his eyes prickling.

 

“Urgh.” He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand, and rolled over onto his back, further entangling his legs with the bed covers. He draped his arm over his eyes and briefly contemplated going back to sleep: the light was early, the flat quiet, and his inner clock told him he could not have got more than four hours' sleep – but he'd woken with his nerves coiled, ready to spring. Despite the buzz of tension in his stomach the familiarity of this feeling was not unpleasant. He felt awake; this was an improvement over the listlessness with which he'd woken the past months, weighed down at the limbs as if bolted to his bed.

 

He removed his arm, narrowing his eyes until they were used to the light. Staring at the ceiling yielded nothing. He wiped away the saliva that had seeped from his mouth during sleep; then he lifted his left arm and stretched out his hand, squinting up at it. Even without his glasses, he could read the words: _I must not tell lies._ The light suntan he'd developed from yesterday's hours in the park made the scar stand out a little more clearly.

 

He looked at it with a pang of distaste and let his arm drop back down. Well, he'd told the truth the night before … I must not tell lies anymore, he thought deliberately, not to Ron and Hermione.

 

It would be some hours until they got up; Sunday was the only morning they could sleep in and wake up together, what with Ron's training schedule and Hermione's morning courses. Harry tended to leave the flat for these hours, in which the delicate silences of their _Muffliato_ s were worse than anything he could have heard, and only made him imagine what they were doing all the more. They never questioned him on where he'd been after he came back; Ron would whistle while re-creating his mum's Sunday roast, and sitting at the table Hermione would tell Harry about what they'd talked about in her Saturday class (Depictions of Pagan Magic in Arthurian Tradition – “I like to look at magic from a Muggle point of view,” she told Harry, “it's interesting to have that outsiders' perspective”, and Ron would rib her about her compulsion to know all perspectives; they'd have an easy glow of post-orgasmic relaxation around them that screwed Harry's throat shut).

 

Today was likely to be different, though Harry wasn't sure what exactly would happen; knowing Hermione, she'd orchestrate a Talk, because they were Adults Living Together and they had to Communicate. (When she talked about things like that, the capital letters were almost audible.) As excruciating as this could be, Harry had to admit she was getting better at moderating when she sat them all down; she was taking a select sample of classes as a free student at the Psychology faculty, and after a deeply vexing phase during which she'd primly say things like “Ron, I won't engage with your pathological urge to compete, please don't take out your brother issues on me”, which was of course the best way to incense Ron to beyond-words fury, she'd now actually become relatively good at disarming conflict. To Harry, who had always known her as rather emotionally brusque, this was unsettling and amusing at once, but Ron had taken it as a challenge and had risen to it admirably. He was now always devising new creative ways to draw her out of her newfound analytical skills and into emotionally powered bickering; “Look, when Hermione and me argue it's like foreplay,” he said to Harry, “it wouldn't be fun if I didn't have to work for it –” after which he cheerfully thumped Harry on the back to stop him from choking on his mouthful of Firewhiskey. “Harry, for Merlin's sake, it's embarrassing how much of a lightweight you still are.”

 

Harry resigned himself to being awake and got out of bed. His insides were tight with expectation; not nerves, exactly, more the anticipation of finally being able to take action. The months of stasis that had led to his unplanned outburst last night had made him feel useless, immobilised … at least now everything was out in the open, and something would happen. Everything he'd agonised about – Ron and Hermione not wanting anything more to do with him or, far more likely and far more horrible, gently letting him down, their pity palpable in the way they carefully took some distance from him and regretfully closed him off from their intimacy, because now they would know how much it hurt him – all of that suddenly seemed remote. Either they would want him or they would not, and if they did not, then at least he'd be able to move on from this terrible feeling of inertia.

 

He stepped into the kitchen, expecting it to be empty, and jumped violently when he saw Ron sitting at the table in his dressing gown, nursing a mug of coffee.

 

“Shit,” he said, gripping his chest, “Fuck, Ron, I nearly had a heart attack.”

 

Ron raised an eyebrow. He looked like he hadn't slept much. “Mate, I'm just sitting here.”

 

“Yeah, I just – wasn't expecting you.”

 

Ron looked at him blearily. The silence spun itself out for long seconds; Harry felt wrong-footed at this unexpected confrontation.

 

“Erm,” he said.

 

Ron gestured with his mug. “Coffee? There's some left in the pot.”

 

“Uh, yeah.” Harry went over the heat-charmed pot and poured himself a cup; it was stronger than Ron usually made it, and it prickled unpleasantly in his stomach. He stood leaning against the counter, debating whether he should sit down and invite Ron's conversation, such as it might be.

 

Ron looked over his shoulder. “Were you going out?”

 

Harry shrugged. “Thought I'd take a walk.”

 

“Is that what you always do when you leave on Sunday?”

 

There was a hint of danger in the question. Harry, bracing himself, sat down next to Ron. “Sometimes, yeah.” Ron looked at him, apparently interested; without thinking about it Harry volunteered: “Sometimes I go to Godric's Hollow.” This was true; he wasn't quite sure why he was drawn to his parents' graves at those times when he felt most shut out of Ron and Hermione's relationship, but he felt sometimes there was an uncomfortable connection between those two things that he didn't particularly feel like exploring.

 

“Oh.” Ron frowned. “I didn't know about that.”

 

They sat in silence, sipping coffee.

 

Finally Ron sighed. “Just so you know, Hermione's going to set up one of her sessions later on.”

 

“Thought she might,” Harry said, trying not to look too resigned at this prospect. “Look, are you, erm...” He took another gulp of coffee and gathered his Gryffindor courage. “About yesterday. I –”

 

“You lost your bloody mind, mate,” Ron said, and gave Harry a flat, hard-to-read look. “We were worried when you didn't come home, by the way. Too much trouble to bother sending a Patronus?”

 

Harry frowned at the hostility underneath the casual words. “Erm, yeah, I suppose I should have sent one,” he said.

 

“Really, you think?” Ron said mock-lightly.

 

Harry looked at him, annoyed. “Don't be so dramatic.”

 

“Dramatic,” Ron echoed flatly, his mouth going thin. “We were about to call Kingsley when we finally heard you coming in. For all we knew some Death Eater hiding underground had got hold of you and was torturing you somewhere.”

 

Harry blew out a breath; a surge of shame put him on the defensive. “Merlin's sake, I can take care of myself.”

 

Ron looked at him, eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? Well, fuck you, Harry,” he said, not quite unpleasantly, which somehow made the words harsher. “I can't believe you don't get why this is important to us. It doesn't matter how pissed you get, you let us know that you're _alive_. You don't have to say anything else, but you do have to say that.”

 

Harry bristled. “You're not my babysitters.”

 

“Yeah, no, we're only your _friends_ ,” Ron snapped. “And we've only actually _fucking lost you_ , we've only actually lost track of you for _hours_ and only saw you again when you were a _corpse –_ ” He cut himself off.

 

Harry stared at him; Ron avoided the look, his jaw working. He took an angry gulp of coffee.

 

“I wasn't a corpse,” Harry said, utterly lamely. _Not anymore_ , he didn't add.

 

“Yeah, well, _we_ didn't know that, did we?" Ron smiled, though it clearly wasn't funny. "You were pretty convincing.”

 

Harry exhaled hard. He didn't know what he'd expected, but it wasn't this: a conflict so separate from what he'd said last night that it was almost as if that hadn't even happened. “I'm sorry I didn't send a message,” he said tightly. “I just … my head wasn't on straight.”

 

“Yeah.” Ron sighed, and wiped a hand over his eyes. Finally he looked at Harry again. “Yeah, all right.”

 

That didn't feel like much of a resolution, so Harry said: “I won't do it again.”

 

“Okay.” Ron, tiredly dispassionate, drained his mug and put it back down. “You still want to go for that walk, then? This coffee's not doing shite. I think I'm going back to bed.”

 

He was getting to his feet; Harry, pained, caught his sleeve with his fingers. “Ron, what I _said_ last night –”

 

Ron looked down on him. His mouth twitched. “Mate,” he said, shaking his head, and Harry's stomach twisted, _here it was_ , here would be delivered the gentle, pitying rejection, the _we love you like a brother, we want you in our lives, just not like_ that; he let go of Ron's sleeve, horror shutting off his throat – “Hermione's so much better at this stuff than I am, so I reckon we should wait for her. And it's… it's a little _much_ , I can tell you that.” The blush starting at his ears was more vivid than usual on his pale, sleep-deprived face.

 

“Right,” Harry said miserably.

 

Ron stood studying him for a moment. “Why didn't you say anything sooner?”

 

Harry shrugged. “Why didn't you say anything sooner to Hermione?”

 

Ron smiled awkwardly. “Fair point.”

 

Harry looked up at him. There was a compelling vee of pale, freckled skin at his collarbones, because he'd only loosely tied the flaps of his dressing gown; Harry made himself look away from it, worried that Ron would catch his look and be disgusted by it. What could he tell Ron? That he'd seen the Locket, had seen Ron's greatest fear: that Harry would get yet another thing that Ron wanted? That he'd been afraid Hermione would feel violated in their friendship, that she had always assumed to be free of this sort of interest? That he had been immobilised by fear that the easy intimacy all of them shared would be lost when he told them he wanted more of it?

 

That he was worried that this sort of thing shouldn't exist, that wanting both of them was greedy, dirty, that he was exactly what uncle Vernon had always told him he was … a freak, abnormal, _q_ _ueer_.

 

“Erm, okay,” Ron said, sounding alarmed, “I can see you panicking from here, mate.”

 

“I shouldn't have said anything,” Harry said, suddenly convinced of that.

 

“Oh yeah, 'cause you were very measured last night, not at all like you were going to explode if you held it in for any longer,” Ron said, deadpan. He grabbed Harry's shoulder, and peered down at him. “Calm down, will you? We're going to talk when Hermione wakes up, and she'll probably have all sorts of annoyingly insightful things to say, and it's going to be fine.”

 

Harry grabbed Ron's hand on his shoulder, blinking rapidly to force back the sudden, treacherous tears in his eyes. “Yeah,” he managed.

 

Ron squeezed his shoulder, smiled encouragingly, then disengaged. “All right?” Harry nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Ron turned and walked over to the door of his and Hermione's bedroom. Harry watched him with an odd sinking feeling in his stomach. Ron looked back before going in. “Hey, when you go for your walk, don't get captured by some underground Death Eater.”

 

In spite of himself, Harry smiled. “I'll try not to.”

 

“Would be a bit of a waste to die now,” Ron said. “Who knows what sort of good things are still in your future.” Despite the blush his expression remained quite blank, and then he quietly opened the bedroom door and went inside.

 

Harry looked at the closed door, listened to the silence on the other side of it, and took a deep breath.

 


End file.
